95 minutes, documentary, color, English, Russian & Yiddish w/ English subtitles, 1997

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, this groundbreaking documentary was among the first American films to offer a full, distinctive, inside look at the traditional Eastern European Jewish communities that found their most vital enclaves in America after mass migrations post–World War II. Taking an analytical and highly informative approach to its subject, Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky’s film—which premiered at the New York Jewish Film Festival in January 1997—looks at the rituals, beliefs, challenges, and daily lives of Hasidic Jews in New York City. Narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker and Leonard Nimoy and featuring a score by klezmer musician and composer Yale Strom, A Life Apart presents a plurality of voices to paint a complex and lively picture of a people who had to struggle to establish their community amid ignorance and anti-Semitism. (synopsis from the New York Jewish Film Festival)

" Startlingly intimate!" -New York Post

"Beautiful, mysterious and mesmerizing." -San Francisco Bay Guardian

The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch by Sue Fishkoff

Boychiks in the Hood: Travels in the Hasidic Underground by Robert Eisenberg

Read FRF's interview with co-director Oren Rudavsky.

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